How Prepared Are You? Let’s Find Out.

Planning without practice is essentially worthless

by Chris Martenson

Over an upcoming weekend in January 2019 (specifc dates to be announced soon) participating individuals will turn off their electricity from Friday at 7:00pm to 7:00pm Sunday and subsist entirely off of their existing preparations.

Are you in?

We’ll be seeking community input over the next month as we refine the particulars of this challenge; but the intention is to stress-test everyone’s current in-place emergency plans. So when the weekend arrives, no going out to the store to get new batteries, more firestarter, or a hot coffee.

A number of Peak Prosperity members proposed this idea to us in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Florence. During those storms, a lot of folks learned their emergency preps were much less robust than they had initially anticipated.

We agree this challenge is a great idea. Working out kinks and shortcomings during a practice-run like this will increase our odds of persevering through a future emergency.

Which is why we’re picking a cold winter month (for those of you in the northern hemisphere) to really push ourselves out of our comfort zones.

What will you eat? How will you stay sufficiently warm? Will you have to take steps to keep the pipes in your house from freezing? How will you communicate with the outside world? Do you have sufficient nighttime lighting? How will you occupy your time?

The goal here is to identify each of our weak areas while having some fun knowing that we're all going through the experience together. We'll all regroup here online once we turn the electricity back on Sunday night and compare learnings. Trust me, there will be many to share.

The Solution For Anxiety

In our ten years of alerting people to the growing predicaments presented by The Three Es, rooted firmly in the impossibility of attempting to grow infinitely on a finite planet, we’ve discovered something very important about anxiety: it dwells in the gap between what you know and what you do.

For example, if you know you live close to an active earthquake fault but have no safeguards in place, you're going to experience anxiety. Maybe your mind is able to suppress it way down to a background murmur, but there it sits anyways, eating away at your peace of mind and sense of being a responsible adult.

And eventually, it will flare up the next time a swarm of light tremors hits your area, as an urgent reminder that the next big earthquake is not a matter of if, but of when.

Because you cannot ‘unknow’ something, your only course of action to reduce or eliminate such anxiety is to take action and bring your behavior into better alignment with what you know is right.

In our earthquake example, that would mean — at a minimum — procuring a 48-hour emergency kit for your home, an emergency contact plan for your family with backup plans and rendezvous points understood by all. You also should have a means of charging your phone and other light electronics without access to the electrical grid, as well as a means of purifying drinking water that doesn’t rely on boiling.

All of that might take you 60 minutes and a few hundred dollars to locate and purchase. But boy, will you feel an immediate sense of inner relief with those basic fundamentals attended to.

Very few families are sufficiently prepared for any sort of emergency or natural disaster. And an even smaller fraction actually run practice tests to ensure their plans will work properly when crisis hits.

So here’s the bottom line: if you're feeling anxious these days, then we invite you to figure out why and do something about it. Close that gap. You’ll feel better.

And if you are feeling anxious, know that you're not alone. There’s a lot to be worried about these days.

Ecosystems are collapsing. The central banks are trying to undo a decade of idiotic money printing. Resource wars are on the horizon. Politics are getting increasingly divisive as the ruling classes seem unable to understand how their policies are harmful to the majority (which opens the doorway to all sorts of would-be demagogues and saviors).

Given the imminence of the end of the exponential economic growth model, an enormous set of obvious questions emerges: What material preparations should you make? Where should you try and store your wealth and in what forms? Where do you want to live? What skills do you need to develop? Do you know your friends and neighbors well enough to rely on them under a variety of potential circumstances?

Once you’ve worked your way through these questions, a deeper set emerges: What’s your role here on earth while you are alive? Who do you want to be? What mark do you want to leave on the world? Are you on track to be a wise elder to the younger generation?

The approaching hornets' nest of crises are truly existential, and therefore evoke a healthy amount of deep questioning, as is right and proper.

The Importance Of Training

To illustrate how stress-testing can dramatically ramp up resilience, increase community bonding, be fun, and be both humbling and inspiring at the same time, let me tell you about our most recent Peak Prosperity skill building event.

Last month, roughly 30 Peak Prosperity members travelled to Pahrump, Nevada for an intensive four-day defensive hand gun training course at Front Sights' incredible facilities. Here's a group photo of all of us:

As good as the ranges were, the staff was even better. All the instructors had extensive, mostly military, experience with firearm safety and proficiency, and were extremely hands-on with each of us:

They drilled the basic steps into us, making us practice them over and over again. Loading and unloading. Drawing and reholstering. Squeezing the trigger and then permitting the trigger finger to only travel back far enough to allow the trigger reset. How to clear the four most common malfunction types. We repeated all of these over and over again during the four days.

A main point of all that repetition was that if, god forbid, any of us ever has to actually use a firearm to defend life or limb in the future, we’ll be lucky to recall 50% of our training in the heat of the moment. The other 50% will go right out the window as adrenaline and fear flood our senses.

So what mattered was that everything we did was always the same. This was to build muscle memory. At least we’d have that available to us, to some degree, if ever forced to defend ourselves under stress.

Look, I’ve been a shooting enthusiast for over 30 years and consider myself to be a decent shot with both pistol and rifle. But I learned more in those 4 days about handgun shooting than I had over the past twenty years, which consisted mainly of going to the range and repeating my self-taught habits, some of which I am having a hard time undoing (good grief, could my left elbow please stay by my side and not fly out like a chicken wing?).

Over the four days at Front SIght I watched a very wide range of skills and abilities narrow down to something approaching solid proficiency. People who didn’t know which way to load a bullet into a magazine on Day1, and who initially repeatedly missed the paper targets from a generous 5 yds, were all smoothly and accurately cycling through the drills on day 4 and reliably putting their shots where they needed to go.

All the reading or lecturing or watching Youtube videos could not have replaced the value we received from 'real world' hands-on practice, especially with skilled eyes paying close attention and providing feedback.

Said differently, plans without practicing are essentially worthless. Anything and everything in life that we want to be proficient in has to be practiced. Navy Seals practice, doctors practice, football teams and ballerinas and musicians practice. Everybody who desires to be useful at something has to practice.

Practice, Practice, Practice

That’s one of the most important keys to life.

If you want to be part of our inaugural Resilience Challenge this January, be sure to register or better yet enroll at Peak Prosperity. For those interested, we'll be providing more guidance on how to participate on the site soon.

Also keep your eye out for more installments of our newly-launched Knowledge Capital Excursions. Odds are high we'll return for another trip to Front Sight next year. Adam is working on a weekend workshop for Peak Prosperity members at Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm in Swopes, VA. And we're working on a few more of these experiential outings in 2019 that should be announced soon.

Bootm line: the world isn’t getting any saner, and there’s certainly a bunch of surprises coming our way in the future.

By practicing and stress-testing your resilience skills now, you’ll be in a much better position to both weather the storms as well as help the many others who are neglecting to get themselves ready.

It’s my view that things are going to get worse before they get better. Maybe a lot worse. We just don’t know yet, but you should be prepared as best you can for whatever's coming.

I also address a new mode of preparation that applies to a wide range of potential scenarios. "Going mobile" as a well-stocked, robustly-skilled itinerant may find you lots of open doors should your initial emergency plans not work out. It's a model worth considering either as a fall-back plan, or perhaps a primary plan for those living in areas unlikely to fare well in adversity.

hurricane michael

gave us 4 days of practice,,,not a hitch(my step father was in town with his Cpap and had to burn diesel all night) could have gone 4 yrs not 4 days.
if alll the world was fine and mad max wasn’t an issue we would be fine, max, however, is a concern.

We’ll join you next time

We’re listing our house for sale in January and have moved about 80% of our furniture, belongings and preps into storage in New Hampshire where our retirement home is being built. We still have one of two generators, our go bags and weapons still here with us. We’re very vulnerable to a real crisis until we get really resettled in NH in May and we couldn’t be ready to participate in January. We’ll be ready for you next time. Great idea! How about every 18 months so we alternate winter and summer scenarios?

surely you can still go 2 days...

Even with all your long term preps elsewhere, you must keep enough food in the house, and candles or something to go 2 days ? It would still be a very good excercise. I will do it this time turning off the solar/battery back up to make it even
I have always wanted this type of thing to happen ( practice, not “the big one”) and for a first having so much notice is ok I guess, but ideally it would be best if we just got a “now” at some arbitrary time, which is what an earthquake would do, and see how it goes. What is the worst that could happen ? It gets so bad you end ear;y and flip the switch back on ? But, even then, alot would have been learned to prep for

Been there. Done that.

Two days without power isn’t much of a test of our preps. It’s more just an inconvenience that draws on our patience, creativity, relationships and mental agility/adaptability. Last March we were at the extended family’s all-electric beach house in Rhode Island celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary when a nor’easter knocked out the area’s electricity service for 60 hours (which is 12 hours longer than this PP test). We had zero preps except my EDC (every day carry) in my pockets and in my truck (none of which were used). No big deal. We just bundled up when we were in the house, spent time hiking during the day, ate for breakfast and lunch what was in the refrigerator and on the shelves that didn’t need to be cooked, ate our dinners and took showers at my wife’s brother’s house 10 miles away (he had a generator), and used candles and oil lamps for lighting. We had decided to go home if the power stayed off 12 more hours (the inside temperature was down to about 45 F), but it came back on. This was unscheduled and we didn’t know when it would end, so it was a good short term test (but not of our equipment and supplies.) It was a test of US.
Ok. You’re on. We’ll join you on the appointed weekend in January. We’ll pack up the cat Friday afternoon and drive to NH for the weekend where we’ll spend our time getting stuff out of storage and setting it up in the house. Then we’ll come home Sunday evening. Mission accomplished!
here are some alternate scenarios to test our survivability on future weekends:
1. Police have just ordered you to evacuate your home due to a raging wildfire (or train derailment leaking toxic fumes and radiation). You have 12 minutes. You may not ever be able come home again. Go! (afterwards inventory what you took in those 12 minutes and make a list of a. What you didn’t really need, and b. What you would’ve regretted not bringing if you could never go home again or your house was burned to the ground.)
2. You’re returning home on Sunday evening at 8:00 pm after having eaten at a restaurant because you’re power’s been out since Friday. There are three men and a teenage girl you’ve never seen before knocking on your front door as you park. As you approach them at the front door, asking them “Can I help you?”, one of the men begins pulling his hand from his pocket and even before it’s completely out you can see he’s holding a handgun. Go!
3. (This is a tabletop simulation, a “war game” conducted in your home.) A massive worldwide economic collapse has been followed by a “limited” nuclear war which has enfeebled most of the conventional military forces of the US, Russia, China, Britain, and NATO. You hear from multiple reliable sources that the Chinese airborne unit that conquered the nearest big city from you is now venturing into the suburbs and countryside expanding their zone of control. They are taking whatever resources they want, killing armed resisters (including military and police survivors augmented by local residents) and setting up military governance staffed mostly with submissive local residents. It appears by their pace you have 3-4 days to come up with a plan and implement it before they reach your location. If you’re going to run, state how you will get there and with what, what you will do once there, and what you will take with you. Show me a map with your route and intended destination. I’ll create problems at three different locations along the route and you have to respond. If you’re going to stay and fight, list the people by first and last name you can count on to fight with you and why you think you can rely on them. Give the name of every local person you personally know and are friends with who at least has one or more firearms and has combat or police experience. List for me all your firearms and how many rounds of ammunition you have for each. Lay out all your weapons and ammunition and send me a photo with an exact count of each. Next go to a shooting range and demonstrate these skills: drawing your handgun from concealment at the signal, hit a man-sized silhouette in the chest two times from 21 feet in 1.5 seconds (and no generous time allowance like at Front Sight in the basic class – 1.8, 2.0 , 2.2 seconds or more). With your rifle, hit a man sized steel target 4 out of 5 times at 100 yards from the prone position, and 3 out of 6 times at 400 yards. No practice shots to get the proper range. No time pressure. In both the handgun and rifle tests no one will be shooting at you. If you plan to submit to the foreign military forces, describe what you think your first week, month and year would be like. State what skills and resources you have that would keep the foreign invaders from killing you or putting you into a manual labor camp. What moral dilemmas do you think you’d have to deal with?
4. On a Saturday grab your go bag and whatever you carry every day, and hike into the woods, mountains or desert. Pretend it’s too dangerous to start a fire for cooking or warmth. You have to stay quiet and hidden from bad people patrolling the area. Eat only what doesn’t need cooking. Drink only what you brought with you or can safely make drinkable with what you brought with you. Spend the night. In the morning cook a meal with the fire you start, with the cookware you brought, with the food you brought. Then hike back.
I’m sure there are some more tests we can come up with that would be fun and revealing.
”Welcome to the Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favor.”

stress tests are part of the life style here :)

Great idea! Glad so many will try this. Where we live in north central WA, the power can go out at any time and does a few times a year. Sometimes it can be out for up to 9 days, so far in the six years we have lived here full time. Sometimes our local electric coop is doing a planned shutdown for repairs.
My husband has serious apnea and MUST have his CPap working every night, all night. So we have had chances to practice using our portable battery (YETI) that can be repowered from our off-grid live solar power during the day. All seems to work well. We also have wood heat and propane hot water on demand and stove with ability to light with a match. Pantry is full, barn is full of hay, shed is full of firewood, car and truck tanks are always topped off. Our irrigation is gravity fed, so no pumps and is off for the year. I guess only the chickens will notice a power outage in the winter as their light will go off.
Good luck to all of you who are taking the challenge! Kate

Just make sure you pick the right side!

Syria, Yemen, Bosnia, Wal-mart, Goldman Saks. . . take your pick. You’d better cultivate good neighbors while you’re at it. Trusted neighbors should be in the mix in a total package of preparedness. Guess what; all of us tend to be smarter and more resilient than each of us

“New fighting forces emerged – versatile mercenary troops and armed marauders who carried out atrocities with utter impunity. And a new breed of war profiteers came to the fore – people like Albrecht von Wallenstein who sought to maintain hostilities for personal gain and looked to turn a profit from one campaign to fund the next. In some ways, war became an industry in its own right. Profiteers plundered resources at every opportunity to sustain their business model, leaving entire regions devastated with no chance of a quick recovery.”

No Power Test

Hi Chris,
We are *IN*. While we have multiple layers of resilience: Solar power, LP generator, well pump, hand pump, wood stove, stocked pantry, etc., *ACTUALLY* do a live test always reveals cracks in the systems and unexpected issues.
As for the value of the test, I think it will be most helpful to have an explicit list of “ground rules” for the simulation; ie. you can (or perhaps cannot) drive your car; if so, no purchase of fuel is allowed. Turn off the main power breaker to the house. Must you live at your own place or go live with nearby family? Personally, I think the value of the test would be most useful if you have to shelter in place; perhaps simulating a massive snow dump where power is out for days and snow plows don’t get out to clear roads.
Finally, it might be useful for those participating to provide some feedback via a structured survey of 10-20 questions with 1-10 scale responses, to allow us to see how prepared we were collectively and what areas tended to be overlooked: water, food storage, animal care, communications, mental sanity, emotional stress, etc.
I think it’s a great idea to do this test, and we plan to invite a number of friends to partake as well. Inviting friends and family to do the test also is way to build community along a common experience and value system.
Onward… eyes open… together,
Bill Costantino

Just did the test for Four hours.

I think you jinxed us Chris! 😉 Last night we lost power and our solar (not dependent on the grid !?!) for about 3 hours. Our solar guy is coming out to look at the system as we have well water and so need it to work. We would be up for the blackout weekend but already have had a taste of it last night!

Horrific Footage

I just posted a Featured Discussion on the catostrophic destruction the Camp (NorCal) and Woolsey (SoCal) fires are wreaking in California:https://www.peakprosperity.com/forum/114520/california-fire-catastrophe
Included is a horrific video just released by a Butte County resident who barely managed to escape with his life. He returns to check on his neighbors to find them all incinerated in their cars as they tried to flee.
It’s a sobering reinforcement of this thread’s “be prepared” theme. And a reminder that your time window to rely on your preparations may be only measured in minutes/seconds in certain emergencies…

All great ideas

BillnEllenprepared wrote:

Hi Chris,
We are *IN*. While we have multiple layers of resilience: Solar power, LP generator, well pump, hand pump, wood stove, stocked pantry, etc., *ACTUALLY* do a live test always reveals cracks in the systems and unexpected issues. As for the value of the test, I think it will be most helpful to have an explicit list of “ground rules” for the simulation; ie. you can (or perhaps cannot) drive your car; if so, no purchase of fuel is allowed. Turn off the main power breaker to the house. Must you live at your own place or go live with nearby family? Personally, I think the value of the test would be most useful if you have to shelter in place; perhaps simulating a massive snow dump where power is out for days and snow plows don’t get out to clear roads.
Finally, it might be useful for those participating to provide some feedback via a structured survey of 10-20 questions with 1-10 scale responses, to allow us to see how prepared we were collectively and what areas tended to be overlooked: water, food storage, animal care, communications, mental sanity, emotional stress, etc.
I think it’s a great idea to do this test, and we plan to invite a number of friends to partake as well. Inviting friends and family to do the test also is way to build community along a common experience and value system.
Onward… eyes open… together,
Bill Costantino

Thanks Bill. I like the ground rules part. Of course, people can elect to modify any way they wish…I’d hate for someone up north to have their pipes burst because of the test, for instance.
But we’ll put together a list of ground rules for everyone that people can then self-select from. Do all of them for the “hard core” rating, and fewer for the “better than 99% of your neighbors” rating.
Also, collecting the after action reports will be critical for the test to be widely useful. I’d love for others to learn from my mistakes and oversights.
Any other ideas from anyone for what should be on either list?

Stress tests are part of our normal life

We have quite a few outages each year in our rural area, some lasting 7 days due to wires down but help to get the wire situation fixed does not come for days due to emergencies down in crowded Si Valley. So most of the time we are on our own.
Within 3 months after we moved to our house in 1985, there was a fire across the street from down wires on the community property. Our new puppy saved everyones lives by barking until we woke up. I called 911 but was unsure if it would really work well in a rural area. So I called every neighbor, the park ranger, and our volunteer fire dept in the neighborhood. Then we ran down with shovels and hoses to try to contain the fire until the fire dept came. By the way, the 911 system happened to be down when I called but no one told me that. This was the wake-up call that caused us to get going and prepare for emergencies.
We are all electric and have PV solar as well as thermal solar. We also have generators to keep our organic farm and orchards going with water. We have a back-up water system with a separate pump and 50k gallons of water in tanks plus a pond across the street. The pond is probably man made.
We also have a Tulakivi masonry stove that heats our house. It can use wood, pellets, or most anything else. It is not considered a wood stove so it is legal in California. The stove comes with a small oven above where one can make bread, pizza, and cook other foods. One can heat it separately to the desired temperature per the oven’s ourside gauge. I’ve used it. One has to be very careful because food cooks much, much quicker than one might expect. We also have a 3 burner propane stove that is portable.
What we’ve found is the most important part of all this is our communications infrastructure. Quite a few have ham radios (including me) and we’re trying to get all with GMRS radios that are preset to the right channels. Every month we conduct neighborhood phone trees. These come in handy and are used in emergencies to make sure everyone is ok and to make sure the GMRS radios work over our mountainous terrain.
Many of us are CERT trained.and understand that we need to make sure that our families are ok first. If so, then we can help those who are in need of help. As CERT teaches first make sure you and your family are ok, then branch out to your neighbors and then widen the circle to your community.
We also have community drills for various types of emergencies in our area, such as earthquakes, wildfires. We have 2 evac routes and are creating a third for the community. There also is emergency storage for medical needs. The Drs that live in our area and are part of emergency preparedness regularly recycle meds and add what is needed to the supply.
What exacerbates our situation when emergencies occur are the camping season in the parks around us. People coming to camp are not prepared for emergencies and in their panic could block evacuation routes, some only accessible via 4WD–a Prius or minivan has a low probability of making it and could block residents from getting out. This is why we are creating a 3rd evacuation route.
We continue to focus on our communications structure and community drills–especially important when camping is in season. Those of us who have lived in this rural area a long time know the importance of also having several forms of energy to draw from.
Thanks to all of you who contributed to the discussion on batteries, their usefulness, longevity, and care.

I have done some of these, for real

I have been evacuated twice for fire, and we have routine power outages, they are shorter now than they used to be, but still routine, so 2 days is nothing for us, but it is good to do, i remember talking family after hurricane sandy, and it turns out that they had never had a power outage over 2 hours before that happened, never in their lives. So, it is very valuable for people to do it as a drill and see what it is like. Used to be, we would get power out for 5 days, no water for most houses then as no one had water tanks or generators 15-20 years ago here, but power would go out when it was storming, so everyone put pots outside to catch rain water which was then used to flush toilets, cook, clean. Usually that also makes the roads dangerous or immpassable. Most if not all houses have wood stoves for main heat or backup heat. Most people ( not me) have propane stoves and can cook when the power is out. I would just put food to cook on the top of the wood stove, it is not a cooking stove, but I have cooked on it alot. Soups, oatmeal, eggs, whatever. Once the power went out when I was about to put pizza into the electric oven, pizza does not come out well on the wood stove. You cover it, it is edible.
Both of my fire evacuations ( I live in California), I was not even at home. People also forget that, anytime you leave you may never go back. You may only have what was in your car or what you can purchase. The bad, close one, we got back not long after the roads were closed, and it was far enough away that we were escorted back to the house and had the 5 minutes to grab stuff. You can do alot with 5 minutes if you are thoughful. Priority is on living things, people, animals. Second priority for me is photo albums, yes, you can have a memory stick elsewhere off site as a backup, but if you have time, the albums are nice. Since someone had already evacuated our large stock, the short period of time was more than enough. SInce it was dusk by then, to satisfy our young one, we grabbed chickens and shoved them into boxes, a neighbor had taken our carrier before we got back for their use it turned out, we took the laptop and photo albums, we put a few childrens toys/books in a pack. We left. This took 5 minutes. Because a friend had gone there right before us and captured the house cat. The one thing red cross will do is give you a toothbrush. We landed at someones house just for the night, then had to scatter all living things to seperate places, chickens here, cat there, human children at 2 seperate safe places, and me with nowhere. So, yes, I do know what it is like to be evacuated with nothing but the clothes on your back as my needs were not a priority. It does not bother me. Cat litter boxes absolutely sell out immediatelly in the surrounding areas, the drug store nicely gave me a cut off cardboard box and a plastic bag, and then I bought a bag of litter for that first night. I feel very fortunate that our fires were kept at bay so not too many houses burnt, and had enough notice to not have loss of life.
As far as the smeone pulling a gun on us scenario, yes, we have talked about this, we do not give in, in general, to people holding guns on us ( except on the street armed robbery where we will give up anything on us) We certainly do not change location or drive or do things at gun point. So, for your scenario, we would seek shelter and distance. Situational awareness at the time woudl dictate where to.
Yeah, I still camp rough, so I have practiced that recently.

evacuation, if you had time

If we did it again, and had time, I would take shelter of some type. Even a small tent and sleeping bag, people out of harms way were offering a spot in their backyard, which is very generous, or if need be, the county could open up a park or local campground, if you had something for shelter. Privacy and your own space is very, very nice. Shelters keep the lights on all night, hard to sleep. Grabbing a tent is quick. Later, we did by a tent trailer, and then have upgraded to a small super old, used, travel trailer, which is luxery evacuation material. If there is time to load the animals AND hook up the trailer. High likelyhood the trailer gets left, well, not high likelyhood, it can go either way. Often you are lucky and have part of a day to think about it.
But, if you have left with the clothes on your back, and make a safe town, hopefully you have a list of what to remember, and on that list should be, go straight to a store right then, and buy a tent and some cat litter.
The other thing to do is be prepared to help people if you are that safe town 50 miles away. FOr example, I can let someone who lost their home stay in the trailer while things get sorted out, or use my tent on my property until things get sorted out. SHelters are hard on people, we need to look out for one another.

evacuation, if you had time

If we did it again, and had time, I would take shelter of some type. Even a small tent and sleeping bag, people out of harms way were offering a spot in their backyard, which is very generous, or if need be, the county could open up a park or local campground, if you had something for shelter. Privacy and your own space is very, very nice. Shelters keep the lights on all night, hard to sleep. Grabbing a tent is quick. Later, we did by a tent trailer, and then have upgraded to a small super old, used, travel trailer, which is luxery evacuation material. If there is time to load the animals AND hook up the trailer. High likelyhood the trailer gets left, well, not high likelyhood, it can go either way. Often you are lucky and have part of a day to think about it.
But, if you have left with the clothes on your back, and make a safe town, hopefully you have a list of what to remember, and on that list should be, go straight to a store right then, and buy a tent and some cat litter.
The other thing to do is be prepared to help people if you are that safe town 50 miles away. FOr example, I can let someone who lost their home stay in the trailer while things get sorted out, or use my tent on my property until things get sorted out. SHelters are hard on people, we need to look out for one another.

Tulikivi masonry stove, Ham Network

jgrote mentioned a Tulikivi Masonry Stove. Apparently they have a metal firebox with a glass door, with soapstone surrounding them to store and radiate heat. This looks like an awesome heating system to place in the center of a home. (Pictures of how they are built by masons.) These look a bit similar to a Russian wood stove in design, but not so massive.
jgrote–can you please explain what hardware your ham radio network uses and how your communities communication tree is set up. I need to do something like this and have not waded in due to the complexity of the field. I would love help simplifiying this part of preparation.
Chris (and others)–Thank you so much specific products with links and pictures! Very helpful. I really appreciate the battery tutorial and the security door discussion (and thc0655) (do you have a link for the security door?).
A call for some more peoples experiences with specific body armor products. Who has tried these and has a specific recommendation or favorite?

Well, as this is a

Well, as this is a “happenning” (as we used to say in the ’60’s….), I assume there will be an award, or at least a gold star, for the one with the most amazing after-action report. I suggest extra points for how many immediate neighbors you get to join in with the exercise. Lots of folks like a bit of a challenge and a break from the day-to-day sameness. Community-building…..Aloha, Steve
ps- thoughts and well-wishes to all the folks suffering from the Cal fires…

True

‘People also forget that – anytime you leave you may never go back.’
So true. Or you may at least be delayed and caught unprepared, and stuck relying on unprepared others.
I was caught out one year away from home, while town was closed off due to a bushfire.
Partner and young child at home, and older relative living nearby, with me locked out of town overnight. Luckily just overnight. Young child and older relative evacuated out of town – in the opposite direction to me, while partner and another relative prepared to stay and fight fire. I was on the phone instructing partner what to pack to be evacuated with the others. Boy was that a test of our communication skills. Amidst a stressful situation I needed to use recall/memory, and clarity in explaining description and location of important items. I needed to confirm the item I was describing was what had been found. And to make it happen FAST. ‘Don’t ask why – just grab it’ I recall demanding down the phone – not everything looks as it seems sometimes, and unless you have written instructions or your partner is aware of everything that’s important they may have questions that are unnecessary at such a stressful time. The back glass window of the car was broken as partner tried to cram things in, and where was the cat….
I had only the clothes on my back, my handbag and phone. But was able to stay with a relative in a safe place. Power did go out there so there was no TV or radio for updates (this person does not prep). Once our phone batteries went flat that was it. I would much rather have been staying the night with someone who had a radio, torches, candles even, and more than a day of (mainly junk) food in their pantry.
Once seperated from others stress becomes worse because you worry about them. Isolation in an environment where there is nothing constructive you can do is frustrating and agitating.
If you are prepared you can help others in their time of need, not add to their stress.

#3

Forget about # 3.
This is Australia. I live in a town and have had mental illness in the past. Just the usual common stuff.
So no guns for me. Zip, zero, nada. Even a shangai is on the verboten list over here. Female. Small, weak (working on that) but at least agile and hopefully a little bit intelligent. No military combat or street fighting experience. No martial arts skills worth mentioning – yet. Last shot a gun 20+ years ago. Know 3 people with firearms, varying regularity of use and skill levels.
However the best I can think of in 2 minutes right now is to contact a certain couple of people I know who have access to 1) certain substances and 2) town water supplies. Perhaps ‘adulterated’ water supplies would stop an invading army. Water supply for. said major town is a lot closer to us than it is to said town. Our town water comes from another totally different area. Moral dilemmas – well maybe save that for the debreif afterwards…
Or take the boat to the nearest ramp and do an Arthur…
Great scenarios THC. Excellent food for thought.

a recent eye-opening experience

Thanks to Chris and Adam for creating this challenge. I recently found myself on Cape Cod at my aunt’s house in the middle of a tornado warning. They have done zero prep so even finding flashlights was a challenge as we made our way to the basement. I pulled my headlamp out of my daypack. I never travel without it and people laugh at my all the time. Never mind the challenge of getting my family to take the warning seriously. One of them didn’t even want to get out of her pajamas. I must say how thankful I was for my calm mindset as I figured out what to do and encouraged my family to join me. Emotional prep is so, so key.
While I felt safe in their basement, I struggled with how to get up to date information on what was happening. They didn’t have transistor radios. The power stayed on so while we were still upstairs we could watch news on TV until the volume of rain eliminated satellite reception and hence TV. The big surprise for me was that I could not find a single local radio station streaming coverage on the internet. During the Sonoma County fires, one of the local radio stations provided awesome and essential coverage of what was going on via both over the airwaves and on the internet. I realize that when I get home (still traveling) I need to learn which local radio and TV stations in the Ashland area cover local events.
This experience begs the question of what we travel with and what happens when we are in an unfamiliar location. I’m a big fan of the Survival Blog’s Ultimate Altoids Tin Survival Kit. I gave these as Christmas gifts one year. People thought I was really nuts. I had fun gathering all of the items and I had to use a small pouch for each one because for the life of me I could not get everything to fit in the Altoids Tin. I have turned to this thing on a number of occasions.
Anyway, maybe someone out there will learn something from my recent experience.

Reality Without Practice is a Drag

A SWAT team attempted a no-knock raid on a drug dealer. However, since the resident was in a brick house in the city and had a steel security door, they just managed to bend his door with their battering ram and threaten him. Since he was in fact not the drug dealer they were looking for, as they had visited the wrong address, he told them to have their department call him and he’d let them in if they were really cops. I hear impersonating police has been popular in the past decade or so among criminals.
Suggestions for new chapters in Prosper!:
Soul CapitalObstacles to Bhakti Yoga Practice
That is to say the practice of directing supreme Love towards God.Would love to know who’s photos are placed on your Puja tables.
[do I hear snickering?]
Lastly, is it me or are there few black and brown people in the “resiliance movement”? (we all know the asians are armed to the teeth with T-Bills)

Prioritising being prepared

Is there a certain type of person who prepares, or makes the effort to prepare a priority?
Myers-Briggs Personality type?? Starsign – Virgo??
I would be curious to know if there are any psychologists here with any info on this.
Every year in our part of Australia we are reminded to be prepared for fire season. Sometimes reminded in Winter if the Burea and conditions forecast a bad Summer. CFA, Emergency Vic and other organisations reach out to the public online, via TV, radio, print media, etc. The add below was on Facebook. Some of these adds would actually trigger a person with fire related trauma.
The local CFA in my area will even come to your home/property for free and offer advice on what to clean up, how to maintain your yard, and other important actions.
Is it really that hard to take the time, and why don’t we all just do it considering the consequences.
Is it like writing a will, and admitting we are vulnerable.
Or is it just the Kardashians and other bread and Circuses are more fun…
Unlike being hit by a meteorite there is actually a very high probability of being afected by fire in my part of the world.
My neighbour on one side is currently voluntarily cleaning up the front yard of neighbour on the other side. We are mowing their grass and killing down their overgrowth that buts onto our fence. Part of the joy of good relationships and community building is we can all help each other for the greater, and safer, good.

Oh Well,

Great Idea

I think this is a superb idea, one that we all agree is important but is all too easy to forget to actually do. Jack Spirko at the Survival Podcast has a good podcast episode on ten ways to test your preps. Of course, planned power outage is top of the list. Perhaps it is worth listening to again to see if it yields any ideas for how to structure the PP Challenge.http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/tsprw-007

newsbuoy wrote:Lastly, is

newsbuoy wrote:

Lastly, is it me or are there few black and brown people in the “resiliance movement”?

I was at college (at a prestigious liberal arts institution on the cutting edge of PC waaaaay back in 84-88) when it was first suggested to me that I might lower my self-esteem based on my skin color (caucasian), since My People had done Awful Things.
That seed took root (why yes, my people *have* done awful things) and grew and I carried that around for a couple decades. Yes, yes, I know: not a real big deal, it’s subset of First World Problems: White Boy Problems.
Anyhow, the invective and vitriol has ramped up bigtime the last couple years (Kunstler points out that the most-hated racial group these days is caucasian men [yes, I know: boo-hoo!]) and it was as this crescendo got underway in the last ~ 18 months I realized —
(A) It doesn’t bother me anymore. Maybe it’s middle age, maybe it’s fatigue (maybe it’s BS?)…. I don’t care what other people think about me. I don’t have the energy or the time — and frankly, every race has its skeletons. Okay, maybe not the Inuit…or Ozzie Aborigines.
(B) The race-baiting thing is just another arrow in the quiver of the folks whose stock in trade is agitating the rank and file for fun and profit. Get not-white-men angry about all the white-men-bad stuff, get other people agitated about trans-people-coming-to-pee-in-your-toilet, and so on.
So, hey, I’d love to see more black and brown preppers/resilience enthusiasts, and will welcome them with open arms when they arrive (oh, and they will — they’re not dumb). But I will not (a) self-flagellate in the meantime and (b) spare any time to organize a seminar for my fellow prepfolk to examine our feelings and own our shortcomings in not being perfectly perfect.
Self doubt and self-hatred? Negatory. I wanna dance! (as soon as I rotate the beef jerky and replace the size 5s with size 6s in my go-totes [the kid just doesn’t seem to stop growing]) — (and yes, I just did both those things in the last 2 weeks…)….
My case is a little different because I live Hawaii. Whites are essentially a minority here, and I think that’s great. I enjoy the cultural overlap and collision and enthusiastically embrace my spot at the edge. Fitting in here (esp for a transplant) is in part about shutting your yap and going with what is, no matter how odd (to a Mainlander) or illogical it might seem.
I love my (Celtic-Czech) heritage, and I enjoy and promote any worthwhile culture regardless of color or origin.
For those that also care to boogie, check my radio show (it’s non-profit community-supported radio): Fridays, 5-8 Maui time (we are 5 hours behind EST, 6 behind EDT). The first 90 minutes are dance/party music, second half is mellow out and chill tunes (to slide you into your weekend). Stream it at http://www.manaoradio.com…
OR: listen to any previous show for 2 weeks after air at http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/station/kmno-fm — click through to the archives and find me on Friday. Or try any of the other shows. There’s lots of great (no rules programming — each DJ plays whatever they like) stuff to be had! Community at its best!

Sager said it in a nutshell

prepared or specifically fire preparedness ?

I live in CA and know of some of these ares that have burned badly right now and last year. While there are some places where they are in the woods, I think what you are not noticing is that we have (are) having whole neighborhoods that are totally fire safe in any sense of the word being burned down. Not in the forest, the neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, Napa, Malibu — those houses are not in a forest, and they were cleared, surounded by cement many of them, look at those Malibu Houses, you cant get more cleared. And, they had tile roofs and stucco ( cement ) exteriors sides. Not exposed wood. Did not matter. Maybe it was the attic vents. Wind carried embers to the houses in those places. It was not lack of clearing !! You know, we realy are not that stupid. Maybe having vented attics is stupid, I am sure someone is tallying and studying this, I dont know, I just wonder, we all speculate and wonder and do what we can. My house has no attic, so no attic vents, and I have sealed my crawlspace, which may or may not make it out of county code compliance, so no vents to my crawlspace under the house either. But, most houses have venting or they would rot.
I live in a wooded area in CA, I have never been to Paridise, it is by the woods, and I am sure they have clearing by all the houses, everyone does, you would get cited. Pg and e hires tree companies and clears branches by the powerlines by the roads. The fire personell, early in the season before they are actively fighting fires drives around and if they see a private property without clearing, they go tell the property owner. All of this is helpful, but it will not stop a wind carried ember from falling on your fence, or your barn or house and catching it on fire necessarily. Sometimes in the woods the fire just gets so hot that trees explode ahead of the fire, the fire hasnt got there yet, the embers did not ignite it, the heat just made it explode.

and, btw, these fire prep’d neighborhoods burning to the ground is a new thing. Not something I have ever seen before

prepared

Mntnhousepermi – all types of preparedness, however the fire example is just one that is in our faces at the moment. You guys actively over there, and us over here preparing for Summer after a dry, warm winter.
I feel as though your response contains some agression toward me. As if you are insinuating I think Americans, or yourself specifically are stupid. Quote: ”we really are not that stupid.” I think this is because you have assumed I don’t know how fire works.
Perhaps you guys over there are experiencing conditions (climate change?) new to your areas and your building codes are playing catch up as ours have in some areas by learning the hard way. In Oz, homes have burned down many times over the years, homes that are not ‘run over’ directly by the path of a spreading fire. But homes that are attacked by falling embers miles ahead of the active front, as you state, (or have had eucalypt or cypress trees nearby explode as their volatile oils get hot.) We know that’s how fires spread so rapidly and morph into giants with multiple fronts, and take out urban areas. And once one home goes, if there’s nobody there dealing with it a whole street can be lost. Lots of examples in oz. Even in our capital Canberra a few years ago.
Ember attack and radiant heat effect are well understood to be a major danger and part of the reason we get on high alert over here when there’s a fire 50miles away. I dunno if you guys issue code days over summer re. fire risk but we do. And the right weather conditions are an alert to action and decision making even without a fire occuring. making the decision to stay home or leave before a fire even breaks out on a high code day. That decision sometimes needs to be made the day before an extreme risk day. Inconvenient – yes. Tiring & tedious – sometimes. Do most people care to pay attention or bother – No. those are the unprepared. Those who are prepared monitor the fire app on their phone all day at work, school, wherever they are, or stay home for the day.
If you live in town, treed or not you need to plan to either leave and hope lady luck is on your side so you have a home to return to, or stay and hope your plan and preps are adequate and you survive. This includes having a well thought out fire plan, reliable grid independant water source (all those swimming pools are great), safest place to shelter, assessing your emotional and physical fitness honestly, dressing appropriately, and testing your firefighting gear, even before a fire. Fire fighting here is often about spending hours putting out embers before a front reaches you, sheltering from radiant heat as the front passes, then going back out ASAP and putting out spot fires and maintaining a watch for hours aftewards.It is well known here to anyone who has cared to investigate their fire planning that brick homes are not as fireproof as people think, and offer a false sense of safety to their owners for the very examples you list.. Eaves, guttering, weep holes and venting are all areas of concern, as you state. So are fences, and improperly screened windows that crack or explode from the heat. Even if you are sheltering while a front passes over you you are meant to be ready inside to put out a fire from a window that breaks, or starts from another entry point. Over the years our codes have been altered to eliminate flammable materials as much as possible and include wire screening over ‘vent’ type areas, under deckings etc. But there are a lot of old homes here. A rural property can be easier or harder to defend than an urban home. We talk about defensible space, whereby the building can be a place of shelter and given the attention it needs to put out a spot fire if the space around it is inflammable and requires minimal monitoring. Plenty of weatherboards with vigilant prepared owners have survived while unattended brick homes next door have burned.
I’ve set up water supplies and fighting gear before code red days and been laughed at for ‘being paranoid’, evacuated and stored for others valuable and irreplaceable objects including pets, put out falling embers, been awake overnight monitoring distant fires and weather, filled gutters with water, and watched my parents prepare to sacrifice their home so they could save their milking shed, so I probably know a bit more about fire preparedness than the average celebrity in Malibu.
One thing we are warned about over and over is not to leave evacuation to the last minute. But every year that happens and people die.
I’m not going to go on as it seems I’ve touched a nerve, however preparedness for ANYTHING also includes personal responsibility and research, and a good dose of what if thinking and paying attention to the world around you. Unfortunately there are plenty of ‘stupid’ people around, no matter what part of the world you are in, where stupid simply means assuming there will never be a flood, fire, tornado, gas leak, personal attack, or one of a number of other things occur in their space. Some people have just never been unlucky enough to be faced with an emergency, until the very first time when it can be too late to learn.
To me over here it seems as if urban America has been caught off guard with similar outcomes as have happened over here in the past. Humans can be slow learners, and we don’t like to worry about stuff that isn’t here and now a problem.
Personally I hate fire. It’s been the most frequent risk to my life and that of my family so far, and causes me the most worry and concern every year. More than snakes!
Hopefully you and your family are safe this Autumn.

timing is everything

I know australia has more experience with bad fires.
timing is everything – we are still digging out our dead with a town wiped off the map and you wrote
“….Is it really that hard to take the time, and why don’t we all just do it considering the consequences.
Is it like writing a will, and admitting we are vulnerable.Or is it just the Kardashians and other bread and Circuses are more fun... ”
Not what you say to a people still out with the cadaver dogs, going one burned to the ground house to the other.
And, the swimming pool area is not the same area as the Northern CA area, the northern CA area was a much lower income area. Down by LA they have these crazy hot winds, other parts of CA that was previously not normal, etc…. etc…. but, the pint is it is not time to analyze it yet. We will, and yes, we always look to australias experience, as it may apply, but they are also very different, — but, right now is not that time

Don't make it a "thing"

…..all this survival stuff. Here of all places is the place to practice “nondoing”. Where your eyes are, so there will also be your heart. Should we be prepared, yes, absolutely. Should we test our “preps”, absolutley. But don’t let it take on a life of its own, because it certainly will. It will become the lense throught which you see the entire world after a while. It will distort your whole life. What is the point of surviving after all, but to live.
What has our ecological, energy, and economic awareness taught us? That what we are doing now is not sustainable. So live sustainably, remove ourselves from those systems that cannot be fixed, building lifestyles and networks that are resilient becasue they sustainable. Survivability is a byproduct of living sustainably, not vice versa. Isn’t that where 98% of our effort should be?
The most likely traget of our armaments will be our neighbors hungry children and not a marauding Chinese army, if things really do go totally to pieces. Economics is just a shadow of the real economy. Stay with what is real, stay with what you love.

One of the best comments I've read here...

Treebeard responds well — imho — to the tone at PP over the last few weeks… I’ll walk away into the woods before I put bars on my windows and load up with guns and ammo… While I don’t expect everyone to stop driving/flying and start raising much of their own food, I do expect that everyone here knows that it is what is required in order to transition to a sustainable world.

Black and brown preppers

They exist! I thought this was a super interesting read – seems as though POC preppers have slightly different reasons for doing what they do than their Caucasian counterparts, but many details are the same.

Kumbaya as a strategy has little chance of success

The most likely traget of our armaments will be our neighbors hungry children and not a marauding Chinese army, if things really do go totally to pieces. Economics is just a shadow of the real economy. Stay with what is real, stay with what you love.

Which hungry neighbors were you thinking of? Probably these:
I already have neighbors like that (updated for 2018). I have a response and a plan for them, and it doesn’t include weapons.
Have you considered that one day you might have hungry neighbors like these:
I have some neighbors like these two, but they don’t openly roam the streets (yet). They do what they do mostly under cover of darkness on “hit and run” raids. I have some plans for those kinds of hungry neighbors too, and they include the morally justifiable use of deadly force to meet deadly force directed at me. See, my weapons don’t shoot themselves or choose their own targets. I do that. I daresay we might all be wise to have plans for all kinds of hungry neighbors. And I embrace and accept anyone whose moral foundation leads them to pacifism even in the face of terrible evil. I respect the choice of pacificism, but I choose something else.
When things really go to pieces I daresay we would be wise to stay psychologically, emotionally and spiritually honest and flexible enough to anticipate, plan for and respond to all kinds of potentially shocking developments. You know, plan for the worst; hope for the best (aka “concurrent planning”). I agree, a cheesy remake of “Red Dawn” in real life here in the USA is highly unlikely. On the other hand, the 800,000 killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide (mostly with machetes and fire) was highly unlikely until it happened. The Bosnian civil war was highly unlikely until it happened. WWI was highly unlikely until it happened. I am absolutely convinced that we have set ourselves up for the worst 20 years in the history of humanity because of our terrible choices regarding the Three E’s, so whatever’s coming our way is highly unlikely (at least by conventional thinking) and will catch us off guard in many ways no matter how well prepared we are.
“Welcome to the Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
Hungry Rwanda survivor

My apologies

I have only just discovered there is an alternativve fire thread running, and seeing more news of a greater unfolding disaster.
However, my comment about why we don’t just do ‘it’, referred to prepping in general, and was rhetorical, not accusative.
and,
The comment about the Khardashians and bread and circuses was an observation of the population’s general malaise towards anything serious in life and not fun.

Do what you need to do

I was not implicating that those who feel compelled to arm themselves not do so. Or that the threat of violence is not a real possibility. Heck, just turn on the news, mass shooting are a daily occurance. The threat of danger is real now as you stated. Do your research, make your purchases and properly secure them, and practice at appropriate intervals, etc. I have lived long enough to be pretty cynical about human nature, especially when things do go to pieces.
What I was talking about was where our spiritual, emotional, and intectual focus is. There are many things that are essential to human sustenance and survival and we need to be conscious of and take care of all of them. But we have a choice about where we place our passion.
The need to survive is a force, like hunger, sex, power. It can begin to dominate our personallity if we let. Especially now that so much about what we see and hear is feeding that part of the human personallity. But there is so much need for healing in this world at all levels. We have so much more in common than we have differences, yet the antagonism has reached a hysterical pitch. And none of it is real. It has no substance.
Lets do as much as we can now, while have the time to prevent our nightmares from coming true. What we do and where we place our focus does make a difference.

scented candles are dangerous

Scented candles, or any other thing in your house that your burn to release its scent, or that you plug into the wall to release its scent, is not good for you to breathe. The VOCs emitted from these chemical scents are bad for human and animal health and you should get rid of all of them in your house. No wonder you get headaches. I am an environmental science and policy professor and these are the things I study and teach. Also don’t burn unscented candles if they have a thin wire within the wick, because that wire is lead and also dangerous for you to breathe the fumes.

scented candles are dangerous

Scented candles, or any other thing in your house that your burn to release its scent, or that you plug into the wall to release its scent, is not good for you to breathe. The VOCs emitted from these chemical scents are bad for human and animal health and you should get rid of all of them in your house. No wonder you get headaches. I am an environmental science and policy professor and these are the things I study and teach. Also don’t burn unscented candles if they have a thin wire within the wick, because that wire is lead and also dangerous for you to breathe the fumes.